Perfect Face for PR?

This week, each class member had to select a PR case study and present the situation, the tactics used and the outcome of the campaign. We were also asked to contribute our two cents on the execution and results of the campaign…

The Situation: Jongleurs, a comedy club chain in the UK, hoped to bolster ticket sales for its new dinner and comedy packages during the pre-Christmas period of 2006. It enlisted the help of Van Communications. The goals for the campaign were to promote Jongleurs as a “leading authority” on comedy and associate it with the UK’s finest comedy talent.

The Strategy: Van Communications launched the Face for Comedy campaign, looking for the “perfect face for comedy,” from June-November of 2006 with a £10,000 budget. Jongleurs commissioned Dr. Anthony Little, who has specialized in facial perception for eight years, to analyze the faces of top UK comedians to see if being “born with a funny face” could explain the success of some comedians over others.

With special software, Dr. Little fused the facial features from 179 pictures of twenty popular comedians into a face many likened to the creator of "The Office," Ricky Gervais. The findings revealed softer, more feminine features were more likely to make audiences laugh.
Gervais endorsed the campaign. It was targeted at national print and broadcast media mostly, and a presentation was made for media of this “perfect face for comedy.”

The Evaluation: The campaign was mentioned on national broadcasts such as BBC1, Channel 4, Five and Sky News, as well as in print in the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Times and The Independent. The campaign also received at least 48 online mentions.

An in-house analysis found 110 items of Jongleurs-branded coverage relating its two desired messages as a “leading authority” with the “best comedy talent.”

The Outcome: The campaign seemed to meet with great success, although I’m not sure the tie to Jongleurs was as apparent as it could have been. The idea of a “perfect face for comedy” and the creation of a face that resembled someone famous in comedy at the time was both clever and appropriate, but this story alone seems to have generated most of the interest. I wonder if the tie to Jongleurs could have been more enmeshed in these efforts.

At the time of this campaign, I had no idea it was going on (it was launched in the UK for Jongleurs…also based in the UK), therefore I cannot give my genuine opinion of the campaign and its success aside from what I gleaned from different UK sources.

The comedy chain’s reports found a twelve percent increase in ticket sales for the dinner and comedy package in the pre-Christmas period.

It is difficult to tell how credible the study of the "perfect face for comedy" actually was, however. Dr. Little showed pictures of faces with various features to volunteers and asked them to rate how funny they thought the person was. If this method was in fact used, the volunteer samples were not necessarily random or representative of all comedy club audiences.

A critic of this study, Tommy Sheppard, director of Edinburgh's The Stand comedy club, found no evidence from his experiences to support the idea of certain facial features predicting comedians’ receptions from a crowd.

This campaign hit on a topic of particular popular interest (the fusion of faces into the “perfect face for comedy”) which appealed to everyone…this creative angle was well-utilized and received significant media coverage. Whether the campaign actually brought Jongleurs the boost in sales it was looking for is another story, and less was said about the success of the campaign than the campaign itself.

Jongleurs seemed pleased with the campaign of Van Communications, and judging by the big media hits the Face for Comedy campaign received, we can assume it met many of its initial objectives and had better, unforeseen results because of its work with a professional, Dr. Little, and because the likeness of the “perfect face” was eerily similar to an actual celebrity in the industry who willingly cooperated and endorsed the campaign.

I'd say Van Communications was on to something...the perfect face for PR, perhaps?

Sources:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23373983-details/Has+Ricky+Gervais+got+the+perfect+face+for+comedy/article.do

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6135148.stm

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1962982.ece

https://webmail.smu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.prweek.com/uk/thisweek/campaigns/article/644929/CAMPAIGN-Jongleurs-finds-Britains-funniest-face/

http://www.vancomms.com/index2.html